


Guide Him to Safety

by Selenay



Series: Assorted Fictional Recollections (AKA the prompt fics) [6]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, Missions Gone Wrong, Post-Episode: s01e22 Beginning of the End, Role Reversal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-25
Updated: 2014-05-25
Packaged: 2018-01-26 12:53:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1689044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selenay/pseuds/Selenay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil rubbed his ear and the static suddenly turned into a loud squeal that made him wince before fading away completely.</p>
<p>"Sir, can you hear me? I've got a line on your location and I can guide you out. Sir?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guide Him to Safety

**Author's Note:**

  * For [desert_neon (sproutgirl)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sproutgirl/gifts).



> This was prompted by desert-neon and an anonymous Tumblr ask, who both requested very similar things: Ooh, role reversal. Phil is on a mission (with Bus team, perhaps?) and in the thick of it. They're trapped, and base personnel is dead, so no communication. Suddenly a familiar voice comes in his ear. Clint is the one to guide them out over coms. :)
> 
> As usual, I took some liberties but I think this covers a lot of it :-)

As missions went, this one had moved from "going a bit wrong" to "cluserfuck of amazing proportions" faster than any mission Phil had been on for...OK, he didn't have to think back too far to find a comparable mission.

On a positive note, at least this one shouldn't result in any of his people getting shot in the stomach. Trip and May had already cleared the perimeter before everything went to hell, and everyone else was back on the Bus. If their part of the mission went as expected, Simmons would be able to synthesise an antidote to the drug that half a town had been dosed with as soon as she had the vials Trip and May were carrying.

As positive notes went, that one was pretty good. Hundreds of people would be saved from a painful death and his team was safe.

On the clusterfuck side, Phil was currently trapped in a supply closet after a Hydra goon got a little enthusiastic with his rocket launcher. Half the building had been turned into a smoking pile of rubble, and most of it seemed to be leaning up against the closet door.

Phil was trying very hard not to think about the metaphorical significance of being trapped in a closet. Really.

The overhead light kept flickering and buzzing in a worrying way, but so far it was holding. Working in total darkness would have made any attempt to escape much trickier. In some ways, he was probably lucky. There had been a supply closet nearby to duck into when the roof started to cave in, and it was a very sturdily constructed little room. If he'd been a few feet further away, he would be under the pile of smoking rubble right now, and that probably wouldn't have been survivable.

Not that his long term survival prospects looked good right now. But where there's life, there's hope.

Phil sat back on his heels and surveyed his assets.

  1. One Kevlar vest, dusty but undamaged.
  2. One hand gun, out of ammunition, stolen from a Hydra guard. 
  3. One knife, tip snapped off. 
  4. Approximately five thousand rolls of toilet paper. 
  5. One mop. 
  6. Two sticks of chewing gum. 



As lists of assets went, he'd seen better. He'd seen worse as well, but not often. That time in Bolivia when his list of assets had been his pants, one sock, and a half a roll of duct tape came to mind. Phil mentally added "Pants, shirt, socks, boxers, shoes" to his current list. Of course, that time he'd also had a mostly-clothed Clint with him and they hadn't been trapped in a closet by a half-collapsed Hydra base.

He tried not to think about all the ways being trapped in a closet with Clint would have had metaphorical significance at that point in his life.

The light flickered again. Phil was starting to get a headache from it. Or the headache might have been a combination the dust and the air supply running low. It was hard to tell.

He sighed and picked up the knife, vaguely wondering if he could use it for leverage in some way to break the door open.

"--cation, sir?"

Phil froze. His ear piece had been silent since May confirmed she'd cleared the perimeter. In the mad scramble to find shelter in the collapsing building, he'd assumed it had been knocked out or damaged in some way. 

It crackled again and a muffled voice said, "--hear me?"

Phil recognised that voice, despite the static. It was familiar and perfect and...

…how the hell was Clint talking to him on the Bus frequency?

More importantly, why was Clint on their frequency?

Why wasn't Clint back at the Playground, letting his broken ankle heal the way he'd been told to? The broken ankle, by the way, that he'd picked up when his deep cover assignment went to hell and he'd had to fight his way out. That one. The one that brought him to the Playground in the first place, because Fury was a good man who'd made sure the agents he trusted could find their way to a new home.

So far, the list of agents he trusted had been very, very short.

Phil rubbed his ear and the static suddenly turned into a loud squeal that made him wince before fading away completely.

"Sir, can you hear me? I've got a line on your location and I can guide you out. Sir?"

"I can hear you," Phil said.

There was a long pause. Long enough for Phil to start worrying that the comm had gone down again.

"Sir, if you can hear me, I've got a plan. You can yell at me about stowing away on your plane later; I need you to listen to me now."

Damn. Phil could hear Clint, but apparently Clint couldn't hear him.

"I've got the base plans here and your science babies have mapped out the damaged portions for me." There was a muffled sound that might have been someone protesting at being called a science baby. "I think that I've got a route out of there for you. Your comm has a tracker inside, so I can see you on the maps. If you don't start moving in a couple of minutes, I'm going to assume you can't hear me and we'll go to plan B. Trust me, you don't want plan B. May's already pretty pissed at you for staying behind."

"I'll do my best," Phil said quietly, even though he knew Clint couldn't hear him. "What do you have?"

"You're in a supply closet," Clint said. "There should be a panel in the ceiling, north-east corner. You might need to climb up some shelves to get it; someone built those ceilings stupidly high."

Phil looked up, searching for a panel. Someone had piled toilet rolls right up to the ceiling on one side of the closet and he used the mop to knock at them, triggering a deluge that bounced off his head and shoulders. It reminded him a lot of the tribble scene in Star Trek, except with less fur.

The panel he revealed was narrow, but not impossible to squeeze through. He gathered up everything he thought he'd need--including the unloaded gun, just in case--and used the shelves as a ladder to clamber upward. A few more toilet rolls bounced off his head before he managed to get the panel open and pull himself through.

He emerged into a surprisingly wide and airy metal duct, and waited there for further instructions.

After a couple of minutes, Clint said, "OK, I'm going to hope you're in the air vent now. Turn left and keep going."

Phil obediently began crawling down the duct to his left. He'd barely gone ten meters when Clint said, more urgently, "Your other left! Not that left. Shit."

Turning around in the duct was awkward and Phil smashed his knee into the side when he did it. It throbbed painfully as he crawled back the way he'd come and started down the duct in the right direction.

"Guess you can hear me, then," Clint said after a minute. "You have no idea how relieved I am. Seriously, no idea. If you think I'm not going to yell at you later for staying behind, you've got another think coming. Jesus, sir. You're the Director of SHIELD now. You can't go doing the last man out routine anymore, OK? Get someone else to do it."

Phil rolled his eyes and muttered, "That's easy for you to say."

There was a soft snort of laughter in his ear piece, which made Phil smile despite his current predicament. Clint had always been able to do that to him, even when they were no more than friends and co-workers. He'd missed that more than anything else through the long months of separation; the sound of Clint's laughter and the way it seemed to wrap around him and fill him with warmth.

He'd never realised that sex could be funny, and beautiful, and thrilling all at the same time, until the first time with Clint.

"Bet you're calling me a hypocrite right about now," Clint said cheerfully. "I'm gonna point out that I'm not the guy that Fury's counting on to set the world the right way up again. You are. When I pull this kind of shit, the worst that happens is losing an asset. You…yeah, it's not that simple when it's you. So stop doing it, OK? Skye agrees with me, just so you know." There was a muffled squawk on the line and a moment later Clint said, sounding breathless, "You taught Skye that move, didn't you?"

The duct ended in a T-junction and Phil hesitated.

"Turn right, sir," Clint said. "Yeah, that right. That's it. I'm routing you round the collapsed sections, OK?"

With Clint's voice in his ear murmuring instructions, and odd bits of critical commentary on Phil's ability to follow directions, he eventually reached a quiet office and dropped out of the duct. Dust filled the air, but the room was deserted and the worst damage seemed to be some cracks running along the walls.

"You're going to need to break the window," Clint said. "It looks like there're some Jeeps or something outside, but you might need to knock a couple of guys out to steal one. Think you can handle that?"

Phil nudged the blind aside slightly so he could look outside. The promised Jeeps were there, tantalisingly close.

The promised "couple of guys" were actually five guys, all armed. The window seemed to be double-glazed, which would be difficult to break with the tools he had with him.

The mop he'd left behind in the supply closet might have been useful about now.

"May says you've got two minutes to move before she comes back to haul your butt out," Clint said. "She's got that look in her eyes, remember that one?"

Phil risked opening the door slightly and peered out. The far end of the corridor was buried under rubble with no way past it, but there seemed to be a dark shape protruding from the base of it. He checked the other direction, which was currently clear, and hobbled quickly to investigate.

"I'm kind of getting how you used to feel when you did this for me," Clint said quietly. "It really sucks to be the guy stuck at base, hoping you'll get out of there. Hoping I didn't screw you over somehow with a bad direction. Just…get out of there. Come home. OK?"

***

Several hours later, Phil collapsed across his bed in the Playground with a grateful sigh. The bed dipped and bounced as Clint flopped down next to him.

"Seriously, I would have paid good money to see that," Clint said lazily. "Too bad Skye couldn't find any cameras near you. Their faces must have looking fucking hilarious."

"I think they were a little surprised," Phil said, allowing himself a small smile.

"Yeah, no kidding." 

The bed shifted as Clint rolled over and propped his head on his hand. Phil turned to meet his lazy grin, feeling warmth curl around his chest and down his spine at the smug happiness in Clint's eyes.

"Remember you asked me why I wanted you, way back when we first got together?" Clint asked. "This kind of shit is why I started to fall for you. I might have a competence kink."

"I hadn't noticed," Phil said dryly. "You've always kept it very quiet."

The tips of Clint's ears went pink. "Hey, have I ever pinned you against a wall and sucked you off in the middle of a mission? No. That's me keeping it quiet."

"You have always waited until we were somewhere private," Phil allowed.

"I really wish we'd caught you shooting your way out of the base on camera," Clint said with a mournful sigh. "Solid gold porn, seriously."

"I was lucky," Phil said. "If the body had been buried any deeper in the rubble, I wouldn't have been able to reach his spare magazines."

"And then you busted out of that window in a hail of bullets," Clint said dreamily. "I'm getting turned on just thinking about it."

"Turned on enough for you to forget about yelling at me for being last man out?" Phil asked, not feeling particularly hopeful.

"I might be willing to take a rain check on it," Clint said. "Maybe. Would it make any difference if I yelled?"

"Probably not."

Clint nodded, but his lips were pulling down unhappily. "I kind of hated having to just give you instructions and hope you followed them. It really sucked, you know? Not knowing whether you could hear me, and then not knowing if you'd go where I told you, or if you'd go off script because you thought you knew a better way. Was that what it was like for you all those times?"

"Yes," Phil said. "Although usually you talked back to me, so at least I knew you could hear me. And you sometimes warned me when you were going to do your own thing. The part where I felt helpless because I couldn't make you do what I thought was best? That part is the worst part, and it never gets any better."

"Yeah, that was the part that I really didn't like," Clint said. "I feel like I should apologise for all the times I didn't follow your plan."

"You usually apologised at the time when your plan turned out not to be better."

"Maybe. But still. I'm sorry. It was fucking terrifying just talking into a void and hoping for the best."

Phil reached over and cupped Clint's jaw, smiling when Clint's eyes fluttered shut for a moment. "You guided me out. Thank you."

Clint opened his mouth as if he was trying to say something, but after a minute he gave a helpless shrug and leaned over. His lips were warm and firm, and Phil tasted coffee and chocolate on them when he opened his mouth to deepen the kiss. Heat bloomed low in his belly, heavy and restless. He slid his hand from Clint's jaw to the back of his neck, holding him in place while they kissed until they were both breathless.

"Can we discuss my competence kink some more now?" Clint asked when they broke for air. "Seriously, the whole mental image of you shooting your way out of the base and hot wiring a Jeep has been doing some things to me."

"You've got a one track mind," Phil said. Not that he minded right now. The heated look in Clint's eyes, and the way his breath hitched when Phil brushed a thumb over his lips, was doing something to him as well. "I can demonstrate my hot wiring skills for you later, if you'd like."

Clint's tongue swiped over his lips and his eyes darkened. "Fuck, yes, you can absolutely do that. Later. Much later. I don't suppose you can send the ducklings away somewhere so I can blow you while you give that demonstration?"

"Probably not," Phil said.

"Too bad," Clint said.

"You seem to have an oral sex fixation right now."

"Are you complaining?"

Phil smiled. "Never."


End file.
